G20 Disaster Risk Reduction Hackathon – Team MapleByte (South Africa, 2025)

I participated as part of Team MapleByte, representing Canada in the G20 Disaster Risk Reduction Open Innovation Demonstrator Project hosted in Durban, South Africa. The hackathon brought together international experts to explore how geospatial data, open innovation, and digital tools can strengthen resilience in disaster-prone regions.

Our team focused on an informal settlement near the Quarry Road / N2 Interchange in Durban, a community historically impacted by severe flooding. I led the Settlement Growth workstream, where I analyzed historical informal settlement expansion, mapped spatial patterns of growth, and developed predictive models to estimate how future expansion may intersect with flood-prone areas. This work contributed to a multi-layered risk assessment aimed at supporting community resilience and data-driven policy recommendations.

Our work used open geospatial datasets, remote sensing tools, and analytical workflows to predict future settlement exposure, highlight vulnerable zones, and support potential policy and outreach recommendations.
The full project, including maps, analysis, and summary results, is available on the team site.